Subterranean London

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Subterranean London refers to a number of subterranean structures that lie beneath London. The city has been occupied by humans for two millennia. Over time, the capital has acquired a vast number of these structures and spaces, often as a result of war and conflict.

Water and waste

The River

Thames runs west–east through the centre of London. Many tributaries flow into it. Over time these changed from water sources to untreated sewers and disease sources.[1] As the city developed from a cluster of villages, many of the Thames tributaries were buried or converted into canals
.

The rivers failed to carry all the

London sewerage system (designed by Joseph Bazalgette
) in the late nineteenth century. It was one of the world's first modern sewer systems and is still in use today, having been designed to account for the city's continued growth.

The Thames Water Ring Main is a notable large-scale water supply infrastructure, comprising 80 kilometres of wide-bore water-carrying tunnels.

The Thames Tideway Tunnel, due for completion in 2025, will be a deep tunnel 25 km (16 mi) long, running mostly under the tidal section of the River Thames through central London to capture, store and convey almost all the raw sewage and rainwater that currently overflows into the river.

Transport

The London Underground was the world's first underground railway and one of its most extensive. Its construction began in 1860 with the 3.7-mile (6.0 km) Metropolitan Railway from Farringdon to Paddington. It opened in 1863, after much disruption from the use of "cut-and-cover" techniques that involved digging large trenches along the course of existing roads, and then constructing a roof over the excavation to reinstate the road surface.[2]

Tube railways, which caused less disruption because they were constructed by boring a tunnel, arrived in 1890, with the opening of the City and South London Railway, a 3.5-mile (5.6 km) line from Stockwell to King William Street. It was planned as a cable-hauled railway, but the advent of electric traction resulted in a simpler solution, and the change was made before the cable system was built. It became the world's first electric tube railway.[3] Although the system includes 249 miles (401 km) of track, only about 45 percent is actually below ground.[4]

Kingsway has an almost intact underground passageway for trams
, which is occasionally open to the public.

Marc Brunel, was the first tunnel known to cross under a navigable river. It ran for 1,200 yards (1,100 m) from Rotherhithe to Wapping, and opened in 1843. It was used as a pedestrian subway, as the company did not have enough money or finance to build the intended access ramps for horse-drawn traffic. These tunnels were later used by the East London branch of the Metropolitan Railway from Shoreditch to New Cross.[2] It was refurbished in 2011 and became part of the London Overground network.[5]

Several railway stations have cavernous vaults and tunnels running beneath them, often disused, or reopened with a new purpose. Examples include The Old Vic Tunnels, beneath London Waterloo station, and the vaults beneath London Bridge station, formerly utilised by the theatre company Shunt.

Defence

Many

Second World War
.

During the war, parts of the Underground were converted into

air-raid shelters known as deep-level shelters. Some were converted for military and civil defence use, such as the now-disused Kingsway telephone exchange
.

Other civil defence centres in London are wholly or partly underground, mostly remnants from the Cold War. Many other subterranean facilities exist around the centre of government in Whitehall, often linked by tunnels.[6]

In December 1980, the

Duncan Campbell discussed these facilities in more detail, in the book War Plan UK: The Truth about Civil Defence in Britain (1982).[8] Peter Laurie wrote a book about these facilities, titled Beneath the City Streets: A Private Inquiry into the Nuclear Preoccupations of Government (1970).[9]

Utilities

London, like most other major cities, established an extensive underground infrastructure for

telecommunications
.

Starting in 1861, Victorian engineers built miles of purpose-built subways large enough to walk through, and through which they could run gas, electricity, water and hydraulic power pipes. These works removed the inconvenience of having to repeatedly excavate highways to allow access to underground utilities.[10]

Abandoned structures

Some underground structures are no longer in use. These include:

  • The London Hydraulic Power Company, set up in 1883, installed a hydraulic power network of high-pressure cast-iron water mains. These were bought by Mercury Communications for use as telecommunications ducts.
  • Sections of the
    Euston Railway station
    .
  • An extensive private underground railway, the
    Post Office
    , fell into disuse and has now become a tourist attraction.
  • Closed London Underground stations are generally not accessible to the public except on London Transport Museum
    guided tours.

See also

General topics:

Individual sites of interest:

References

  1. PMID 11751359
    .
  2. ^
    ISBN 0-7110-2416-2
  3. ^ Charles E. Lee, (1967), Sixty Years of the Northern, London Transport
  4. ^ "Transport For London, Key Facts". Archived from the original on 29 June 2012. Retrieved 16 January 2009.
  5. ^ Thames Tunnel
  6. ISBN 978-0-586-05055-2
    .
  7. ^ Campbell, Duncan (December 1980). "A Christmas Party for the Moles". New Statesman. pp. 19–26.
  8. ISBN 0-09-150670-0
    .
  9. ^ Laurie, Peter (1970). Beneath the City Streets: A Private Inquiry into the Nuclear Preoccupations of Government. United Kingdom: Allen Lane.
  10. ISBN 0-948667-69-9

Bibliography

External links


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